When passing it makes sense to play the ball generally IN FRONT of your team mate to allow for your team mate to run on to and keep up the general momentum of play. We've done this very effectively with midfields of Keane, Beckham, Scholes, Giggs of course.

This season all too often the ball is played to where the player is standing at the time of the pass which means:-

1. The ball is effectively played behind the player and the player has to stop and play a backwards pass, or

2. The opposition player reads the ball and gets to it first.

Look at any 10 minute sequence of passing where we have possession and you'll see it.

I don't understand how such a basic situation could be so woeful. We are Manchester United!!!

The players know it. They're not now comfortable anymore playing the ball in tight spaces or at speed so our general attacking play suffers.

YES we DO have a few periods of stringing a few passes together but this is the exception rather than the rule.

SAF at the end of last season that Barca had issued a challenge. I thought that meant that we would immediately try to match it. A central midfielder playing the ball at pace, first time accurate passing was a MUST. Instead we bought Phil Jones who we didn't actually need at that time.

PJ may go on to be a great player. But He's not in the first team by right and we're out of both European Competitions which means that we've actually gone backwards. I'm furious with SAF because HE KNOWS - EVERYONE KNEW we needed central midfield players - the likes of Park, Giggs, Scholes, Fletcher can't cut it in there at the highest levels any more. He knew more about the Fletcher situation than I did in the summer. Cleverley was unproven, Hargreaves left, and Anderson has never played more than 15 league matches in a season - YET HE BUYS A DEFENDER THAT WE DON'T NEED!!!

Our passing tonight was excellent for most of the game. 70% possession for the first half hour of the second half. Got nervous in the last 10-15 minutes but hey, we're in a title race. In case you hadn't noticed.

Scholes has come back and proven he is the best in the PL at his job. Giggs has assisted so many goals this season. Welbeck and Rooney play some fantastic 1-2's Cleverley passes the ball very well. We are not Barcelona and we need to focus on being Manchester United who have always tended to have been the best all round team in the league.

Our passing was generally quite good tonight to be honest. We were dominant in possession at spells in the game, which shows that we were able to pass the ball well and that we weren't sloppy with it.

We only looked a bit shaky with the ball towards the end, but Fulham were applying a lot of pressure by that point. We could've probably scored a second if we went for it, but we didn't really want to go all out for it because we didn't have to.

I didn't have to read the whole thread, because I can assume most of it is kneejerk and false from the title alone.

Had we lost or they scored an equaliser you could say it's knee-jerk so clearly it's an observation!

Have a look at our passing and see how many passes led to the player HAVING to check stride and play the ball backwards. We had lots of impetus but lots of times not keeping the flow of the passing going particularly through central midfield.

Noticed this since playing in Europe so certainly nothing knee-jerk about it!

Our passing tonight was excellent for most of the game. 70% possession for the first half hour of the second half. Got nervous in the last 10-15 minutes but hey, we're in a title race. In case you hadn't noticed.

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I'd say our passing was excellent for 70% of the pitch. We had no problem keeping possession in defense or around the middle but poor passing cost us chances a lot of chances tonight. I'd argue that our movement was very good but our passing was not. So it was easy enough to keep possession but not create.

I'm not sure how many times the opposition player read and intercepted the ball tonight, as Pogue said we had 70% possession for a significant amount of time. We tried to spread and open the play lots tonight as they had 11 men camped in their half, that's why we passed it behind the man rather than in front, so that they could pass and move and hope to create an opening.

I missed the first twenty minutes but I thought from 30-70 mins basically we dominated the passing, keeping it at ease. For some reason in the last 15 or so we started underhitting passes with shocking regularity. Certainly not a persistent problem, though it does worry me to see pressure affecting the squad that much.

Scholes has come back and proven he is the best in the PL at his job. Giggs has assisted so many goals this season. Welbeck and Rooney play some fantastic 1-2's Cleverley passes the ball very well. We are not Barcelona and we need to focus on being Manchester United who have always tended to have been the best all round team in the league.

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Agree with you on Scholes, Giggs, Cleverley. I like Anderson etc. I'm not asking for us to be as good as Barcelona at this yet. Just think we can be much better. Is that so wrong?

I'd say our passing was excellent for 70% of the pitch. We had no problem keeping possession in defense or around the middle but poor passing cost us chances a lot of chances tonight. I'd argue that our movement was very good but our passing was not. So it was easy enough to keep possession but not create.

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That's fair. We generally didn't use the ball well in the final third. Mainly due to Welbeck, Rooney and Hernandez all playing poorly. Midfield and defence passed the ball very well though. Some of the inter-play was lovely.

Got no problems with the final ball. They defended terrifically and we had many blocked shots. Our attacking was okay - could have been better. Welbeck could have held the ball up more and had an off-day. Not knee-jerk, not blaming individual players.

Just stating that I would expect our passing to be better. I'm sorry but saying we're top of the league so can't be that bad doesn't cut it. We're also out of 2 European competitions having been completely outplayed in both - so something is clearly wrong!

Passing was fine, there are always more passes off target in the attacking third and when teams defend so deep as Fulham did it is even more likely that there will be passes missed as we try and find smaller gaps.

Passing wasn't the worst I've seen it, but definitely some sloppy passing at times, there were quite a few times the ball wasn't meeting the man, either by the Fulham player reading it, or simply not enough weight on the pass.

In the last 10 minutes though, it just nearly went to pieces. That part where I think it was Evra and Young both just stopped, and left the ball sitting while a Fulham player ran onto it, I near went bananas!

We had an overall 88% success rate. The problem today was in the attacking third where we only managed 73%. This is compared to 77% and 85% in the previous 2 games. Not as bad as you made out, but there was some wastefulness tonight.

We had an overall 88% success rate. The problem today was in the attacking third where we only managed 73%. This is compared to 77% and 85% in the previous 2 games. Not as bad as you made out, but there was some wastefulness tonight.

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Yup just seen that, Rooney passing accuracy was lower than Giggs' too.

We had an overall 88% success rate. The problem today was in the attacking third where we only managed 73%. This is compared to 77% and 85% in the previous 2 games. Not as bad as you made out, but there was some wastefulness tonight.

Exactly. Overall our play was good, considering over the whole season our pass rate is 84.9%. We were just a bit slack in the final third compared to recent weeks. If anyone cares, Evans had our highest pass completion. 98% with 86 out 88 completed.

Not sure why people are so worked up about it. It was frustrating but we're not going to be pinging it around with pinpoint accuracy every game. Our passing recently has been very good, and to say it's been awful recently is somewhat ridiculous.

lol I only saw the last 10 minutes or so. We can't forget it's a young team but whatever age you are, you're playing for United. You have to have balls and the number of times we did the simple thing wrong, was terrible.

We want to win trophies? We have to handle the pressure. We got away with it. If the pen had of been given, the mood would be A LOT darker. In those 10+ mins it was complete naivety.

But if we did well in the main then what can you say? Least we got the three points. I'm glad.

Fulham did well in the final third in terms of defending. Teams can do that. We weren't as good as we sometimes can be. That can happen. so I'm pleased we didn't concede. I would have liked another goal.

But I don't understand why a thread is labelled stupid just for pointing out that our general passing isn't as good as it has been earlier in the season and in previous season.

ON a PLUS POINT I was pleased with our TEAM PRESSING against Fulham which produced many errors and helped us have 70% possession. But don't confuse this stat with saying that we passed well. Our passing was SAFE! But with better passing accuracy and momentum we would have converted more attack into the end result.

I hope Cleverley can maintain match fitness and form and as he will be very important to our run in. Would also be nice if Anderson can come back but don't think that will happen.